7th Laboratory Receives Department of Defense ELAP Accreditation

TestAmerica’s Knoxville laboratory received DoD ELAP accreditation under the Department of Defense Environmental Laboratory Approval Program (ELAP). The Tennessee site is TestAmerica’s seventh facility location to be accredited under the program.

The Knoxville laboratory is recognized for various specialty analyses including Dioxins/Furans by EPA Method 8290A, 1613B, PCB congeners by high resolution mass spectrometry, stationary source emission testing, and ambient air testing for volatile organic compounds by TO-14A/TO-15 methods.

TestAmerica laboratories previously accredited under the program include locations in Savannah, GA, Arvada, CO (Denver), West Sacramento, CA, University Park, IL (Chicago), Earth City, MO (St. Louis), and Tacoma, WA (Seattle). Five additional TestAmerica facilities are actively pursuing accreditation, which will further add to TestAmerica’s extensive laboratory DoD support network

On December 24, 2008, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense authorized the DoD wide program to accredit laboratories that perform testing in support of the Department of Defense. Among the objectives of the program were to promote interoperability among DoD components and to promote the collection of data of known and documented quality.

Effective October 1, 2009, laboratories seeking to perform testing in support of DoD Environmental Restoration (ER) programs must be accredited with the requirements of this program prior to providing testing support. TestAmerica has been a proponent of a unified accreditation program for years and contributed many enhancements to the DoD Quality Services Manual in Version 4.0 and more recently had its technical suggestions added to Version 4.1, which was released on April 23, 2009.

“TestAmerica has a long history of working cooperatively with the Department of Defense and its components in support of a wide variety of environmental projects and programs. We have held a variety of DoD accreditations over the years and have enjoyed playing an integral role in the development of the new unified accreditation standard,” said Larry Penfold, Quality Director for TestAmerica.